Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture, 3rd ed (1985/2008)

“Electronic and Experimental Music provides a thorough treatment of the relevant history behind the marriage of technology and music that has led to the state of electronic music today. Drawing widely on innovations from the worlds of classical music, rock and roll, hip hop, popular music, jazz, and modern dance, it covers the chronology of electronic music in separate parts devoted to early history, analog synthesis and instruments, digital synthesis and computer music, and the music itself. The third edition incorporates a contemporary pedagogical design, offering a variety of learning aids designed to help readers understand and review basic concepts, history, and milestones in electronic music, including reader’s guides and summaries at the beginning and end of each chapter, sidebars providing a unique profile of an influential individual in the field of electronic music, playlists of recommended listening covering every genre mentioned in the text, and timelines highlighting major technological andmusical innovations discussed in each chapter.”

Publisher Scribner, 1985
Third edition, Routledge, 2008
ISBN 0415957826, 9780415957823
462 pages

Key terms: Theremin, John Cage, Wendy Carlos, Gordon Mumma, Telharmonium, Robert Moog, Buchla, musique concrete, David Behrman, Pauline Oliveros, analog synthesizers, electronic musical instruments, Alvin Lucier, David Tudor, Bell Labs, Pierre Schaeffer, Max Mathews, Hugh Le Caine, Robert Ashley, keyboard

PDF, PDF (9 MB, updated on 2015-7-9)

Aden Evens: Sound Ideas: Music, Machines, and Experience (2005)

As record collectors and file swappers know, the experience of music—making it, marketing it, listening to it—relies heavily on technology. From the viola that amplifies the vibrations of a string to the CD player that turns digital bits into varying voltage, music and technology are deeply intertwined.

What was gained—or lost—when compact discs replaced vinyl as the mass-market medium? What unique creative input does the musician bring to the music, and what contribution is made by the instrument? Do digital synthesizers offer unlimited range of sonic potential, or do their push-button interfaces and acoustical models lead to cookie-cutter productions? Through this interrogation of sound and technology, Aden Evens provides an acute consideration of how music becomes sensible, advancing original variations on the themes of creativity and habit, analog and digital technologies, and improvisation and repetition.

Sound Ideas reinvents the philosophy of music in a way that encompasses traditional aspects of musicology, avant-garde explorations of music’s relation to noise and silence, and the consequences of digitization.

Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2005
ISBN 081664537X, 9780816645374
203 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

X-MED-A: Experimental Media Arts (2006)

“In X-MED-A publication you can find more than 40 contributions from a motley crew of artists, designers and engineers, including Matthew Fuller, Joey Berzowska, Casey Reas, Akihiro Kubota along with many other clever and lovely people. The articles, interviews, poems and patches reflect upon education and play, poetics and aesthetics, technology and collaboration, politics and economics of experimental media arts, steeped in a sea of photographs, diagrams, screenshots and illustrations.

The review originated from a series of technically and artistically diverse workshops, organised by four independent technological arts initiatives in Brussels: FoAM, nadine, okno and iMAL. The workshops responded to the needfor a place where continuous learning and dialogue between peers is encouraged, with the objective of sharing of experience, skills and knowledge among diverse groups interested in emerging ideas, media and technologies.”

Contributions by mxhz.org, Guy van Belle, Angez Bewer, Bartaku, Johanna Berzowska, Nicolas Collins, Alejandra Perez Nunez, Akihiro Kubota, Franziska Huebler, Carole Collet, FoAM, Eleonora Oreggia, Casey Reas and Ben Fry, jasch, David Griffiths, Toplap, so-on, Xavier Ess, Els Viaene and Dieter van Dam, Code31, Nadine, Yves Bernard, HC Gilje, Rachel Wingfield, Christoph de Boeck, Isjtar, Nicolas d’Alessandro, Jelle Dierickx, Jenny Tillotson, Jessica Hemmings, Toysband, Alejo Duque, Erik Parys, Pablo Diartinez

With an introduction by Matthew Fuller
Edited by Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM), nadine, Annemie Maes (okno), Yves Bernard (iMAL)
Assistant editor: Alkan Chipperfield
Publisher: FoAM, nadine, okno, and iMAL, Brussels, 2006
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License
ISBN 908107332X
156 pages

Project website
Editor (FoAM)

PDF (updated on 2021-12-29)